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The first key to successful swing trading is picking the right stocks. The best candidates are large-cap stocks that are among the most actively traded stocks on the major exchanges: for example, Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems. In an active market, these stocks will swing between broadly-defined high and low extremes, and the swing trader will ride the wave in one direction for a couple of days or weeks only to switch to the opposite side of the trade when the stock reverses direction. It should be noted that in either of the two market extremes, the bear-market environment or bull market, swing trading proves to be a rather different challenge than in a market that is between these two extremes. In these extremes, even the most active stocks will not exhibit the same up-and-down oscillations that they would when indices are relatively stable for a few weeks or months. In a bear market or a bull market, momentum will generally carry stocks for a long period of time in one direction only, thereby ensuring that the best strategy will be to trade on the basis of the longer-term directional trend.

The swing trader, therefore, is best positioned when markets are going nowhere–when indices rise for a couple of days and then decline for the next few days only to repeat the same general pattern again and again. A couple of months might pass with major stocks and indices roughly the same as their original levels, but the swing trader has had many opportunities to catch the short terms movements up and down (sometimes within a channel).

One excellent (and free) resource that I frequently use is Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com. This website will let you view stocks in truley intense detail. If you are really an investment nerd (Or if you just want to be informed) Download the applet called Stock Screener. Here’s the link:

This will help you seperate the wheat from the chaff… so to speak… You can customize by large cap/small cap, PE ratio, volue, etc. I like this tool more than any of those I have seen from E*Trade, Sharebuilder or Scottrade.

Good Luck and happy investing!

Please let me know if you need any additional information before you chose the best answer!

The first key to successful swing trading is picking the right stocks. The best candidates are large-cap stocks that are among the most actively traded stocks on the major exchanges: for example, Intel, Microsoft, and Cisco Systems. In an active market, these stocks will swing between broadly-defined high and low extremes, and the swing trader will ride the wave in one direction for a couple of days or weeks only to switch to the opposite side of the trade when the stock reverses direction. It should be noted that in either of the two market extremes, the bear-market environment or bull market, swing trading proves to be a rather different challenge than in a market that is between these two extremes. In these extremes, even the most active stocks will not exhibit the same up-and-down oscillations that they would when indices are relatively stable for a few weeks or months. In a bear market or a bull market, momentum will generally carry stocks for a long period of time in one direction only, thereby ensuring that the best strategy will be to trade on the basis of the longer-term directional trend.

The swing trader, therefore, is best positioned when markets are going nowhere–when indices rise for a couple of days and then decline for the next few days only to repeat the same general pattern again and again. A couple of months might pass with major stocks and indices roughly the same as their original levels, but the swing trader has had many opportunities to catch the short terms movements up and down (sometimes within a channel).

One excellent (and free) resource that I frequently use is Yahoo! Finance http://finance.yahoo.com. This website will let you view stocks in truley intense detail. If you are really an investment nerd (Or if you just want to be informed) Download the applet called Stock Screener. Here’s the link:

This will help you seperate the wheat from the chaff… so to speak… You can customize by large cap/small cap, PE ratio, volue, etc. I like this tool more than any of those I have seen from E*Trade, Sharebuilder or Scottrade.

Good Luck and happy investing!

Please let me know if you need any additional information before you chose the best answer!

Three things to focus on with swing trading.
1) trend
2) support and resistance
3) momentum including volume and indicators.

So much of the time 3) becomes more confirmation rather than the deciding tool. That said, most people use MACD and Stochastics, and moving average for indicators. They vary the settings based on the timeframe in which they are trading.

Popular settings include:
30dMA = 30 day simple moving average
10,26,9 for MACD
14,5 for stochastics

You can start with that and backtest it. Many good books you can use to start with as well.

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